


Choice Spirits

by Selden



Category: The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Charles Dickens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, An account of a Theatrical Work, As yet unseen upon the London Stage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 11:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/pseuds/Selden
Summary: Mr Grewgious strikes a bargain. Mr Bazzard regrets the harsh judgement of an unfeeling world - if not as much, perhaps, as one might think.





	Choice Spirits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notkingyet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notkingyet/gifts).



“As if, they say. As if like a fabulous Familiar. As. If.”

“Dear me,” says Mr Grewgious, giving his scant sandy hair one quick solicitous stroke, as one might approach a nervous cat. “Do they, now.” He pauses, making to stroke again, then lets his hand fall to the papers spread in rustling autumnal layers over the desk before him. “Surely,” he ventures at length, “it would be a little inconvenient, for the both of us, if they didn’t.”

“Well,” says Mr Bazzard. “You may be content, then. For they do.” And he lowers his head, until he is very nearly nose to nose, so to speak, with the papers on his own desk.

“But I, at least,” says Mr Grewgious, “shall always know the truth. Little as it may serve,” he adds swiftly, “to assuage the pang – the pang of being, shall we say, misapprehended? By the ordinary sort?”

“I follow you, sir,” says Mr Bazzard. “But I should rather say, by everyone. Except yourself, sir, in the natural course of things.”

“The natural course,” Mr Grewgious repeats. “Dear, dear me.” The phrase seems productive of a remarkable degree of agitation, for he proceeds to stroke down his hair, then his face, the dull stuff of his waistcoat, and, lastly, the shinier stuff marking his elbows and his knees. “The natural course,” he says again, and makes to stroke, of all things, the coarse black locks of Mr Bazzard, where he sits beside him at his desk. He thinks better of it, however, and subsides.

For some time there is no movement in Mr Grewgious’ chambers but the small shifts and shuffles of the fire in the grate, and the scratching of pens across paper. Outside, dull sounds of night-time London come and go, not quite unlike the distant sounds of waves. A further oceanic touch comes from a kind of phosphorescence in the air, where the low clouds reflect back something of the city’s light, as if filtered through heavy harbour water.

“Still,” Mr Grewgious offers, laying down his pen, “when the thing does come off, Mr Bazzard – as I have every faith it will – when the thing comes off, the world will know some portion of the truth. They might,” he goes further, “even speculate as to the outline of the whole affair.”

“Speculate,” says Mr Bazzard, bitterly. “Speculate!”

“Conjecture, then.” Mr Grewgious lifts up his head, and stares as if entranced towards the large, slope-shouldered volumes lined up along the bookshelves in the corner of the room. “The Tomb,” he cries. “The poor young maiden, wandering, mourning her sweet love, entirely lost among the misty graves! The gorgeous spirit, just exhumed, revealed to light and air!”

At this, Mr Bazzard intervenes. “Ghastly spirit,” he says reproachfully. “Ghastly, sir.”

Mr Grewgious coughs, and strokes, and pats himself back into shape. “I beg your pardon, Mr Bazzard,” he says. “Ghastly, of course.” And if he slips a sidelong glance, just at that moment, to Mr Bazzard’s visage, half-visible beneath his gloom of hair – who is it, in his chambers, who could bring themselves to say him nay? “The ghastly spirit,” he resumes - and stops.

For an instant, Mr Grewgious seems to gaze not at the scene before him – or even a putative and glorious theatre stage – but at some other place. The spare lines of his face give little enough away, but let us say that what passes before him is the distant past. A small still town, perhaps, where fog is stuffing up the narrow streets and narrower gardens, and rolling through the confines of the Cathedral close in rippling clouds, as if descending – sucked down, one might say – into some vast dark well, unseen amongst the murk. A still small town, where one stiff figure walks among the graves, skirting fresh piles of rubble in the ruined cloisters, and holds in one stiff pocket one stiff box, in which lies, delicate and finely wrought, a ring. A still small town, rook-ridden, hushed with fog, where this most Angular of night-walkers stops, listening, as if he hears a knocking sound within the wall.

“The Ghastly Spirit?” Mr Bazzard prompts, seeing Mr Grewgious abstracted.

“Ah, yes. My apologies, Mr Bazzard.” Mr Grewgious hoists the Theatrical Manner once again, rather in the manner of a porter heaving some large and unwieldy item of luggage into an overhead rack. “The Ghastly Spirit, whispering from the Tomb. The Offer,” he declares, “made and accepted, there amidst the mouldering stone, beside the open vault. The sombre truth, that nothing but her loneliness bids her accept!”

“Her urgent need,” Mr Bazzard objects, “for dread deeds only a spirit could perform.”

“Of course, of course,” says Mr Grewgious. “Beg pardon, I do assure you. Dread deeds, and so forth.” He hems, and pats, and seems for a moment to suspect the phosphorescence has made its way into his snug chambers, by the way he stares around. He might be thinking, now, of those dread deeds - or of a bargain struck, so long ago, in which companionship alone was called for, and granted, by a Fiend, in antique and remarkably unflattering clothes, who only half-remembered how to be a man. What careful handling should such a lost creature require! What a grand task, to find among the graves! But Mr Grewgious says none of this. “The bargain,” he proceeds at length, “the bargain struck. The manner - hem - the manner it was sealed.”

At this, Mr Bazzard makes no demurral. “Sealed and delivered,” he pronounces, instead, with considerable satisfaction.

“The ghastly fate awaiting the fair one,” Mr Grewgious continues. “In the – the natural course of things. Her very soul consumed, dear me.” At which, a hansom cab, rattling its way through Holborn after dark, raises a great muffled din, as if it were a peal of long-drowned, storm-rung bells.

Lest the reader should suspect Mr Grewgious - an Angular man, of Oblique yet unimpeachable propriety - of taking this dire fate somewhat lightly, let us consider, for one, the nature of the Fiend. Artistic, true, in temperament; a little moody, yes - but otherwise, for some considerable span of years, a faithful follower; less a Familiar than a Friend. And let us consider, likewise, the method involved in sealing up the bargain under question, lo those many years ago - a method prone to scandalise even the most notional of maidens, and capable, even in the present day, of raising no small amounts of fluster within the confines of Mr Grewgious' Angular heart.

“Or corrupted,” says Mr Bazzard, the Fiend in question. “Could be I have her corrupted.”

“Dear me,” says Mr Grewgious again. He gives Mr Bazzard a quick, considering look, as if to say - my friend, I see you need me, and I follow you. “By the fiend?”

Mr Bazzard’s shaggy head nods decisively. “She’d have to stick around then,” he says. “Being a foul fiend herself, for all intents and purposes. Nasty business, that would be.”

“Ah?” Mr Grewgious leans closer, and lowers his voice, almost confidingly. “Might one enquire,” he murmurs, “as to the manner of this – this, ahem, corruption?”

Mr Bazzard turns his pale, sulky face towards Mr Grewgious’ worn, bright-eyed one. “Similar,” he says, “as to the bargain. Same method. Further business.”

“Further business?” Mr Grewgious’ face is now really quite remarkably close to that of Mr Bazzard, and his eyes are not so much bright as they are shining. “Might one ask,” he says, “how much further?”

“One might not,” says Mr Bazzard.

Mr Grewgious subsides. “Oh,” he says softly. “Dear me!” For a moment, the twinkle in his eyes looks like something quite, quite different. “How trying you must find me, Mr Bazzard,” he says. “How very trying. Offering you such small scope for your considerable gifts - and such scope as there is for me to offer, lying in quite another direction from that to which you naturally incline. And in addition," he says, "I am, of course, quite devoid of long flowing blonde hair, or – or of the other appurtenances, suitable for inspiring the creation of your maiden heroine.”

At this, Mr Bazzard’s glum, puffy face becomes glummer and puffier by far, and he starts up, laying a hand – of all things! – upon his master’s shoulder. “Meant by that,” he says gruffly, “easier to show, than tell. That’s all.”

“Easier to show?” Mr Grewgious appears momentarily deprived of the ability to stroke, or hem, or pat, or manifest the smallest touch of independent speech. “Easier to show?” he says again.

“Said it, didn’t I?” Mr Bazzard is scarcely more communicative.

“But my dear chap,” says Mr Grewgious. “My dear Mr Bazzard. What about the hair?” He comes unstuck from his frozen attitude as he unburdens himself of this question, and strokes his own hair back again, as if to make some demonstration of the dearth in question. When he lowers his hand, however, it is only as far as to lay it upon that of Mr Bazzard, which is still, inexplicably, maintaining its steady grasp upon his shoulder.

“Hair no object,” says Mr Bazzard. “Scope no object. Appurtenances no object. Maiden heroine no object.”

“Ah,” says Mr Grewgious, delicately. “Ah, my dear Mr Bazzard.”

And if Mr Grewgious moves forward, inside his little room, beneath the glowing unseen London sky, and if Mr Bazzard leans forward likewise, and if certain further business occurs – much further business, one might say, right there upon the shabby hearthrug, at considerable risk to mature joints – if such things were to happen, why, the phosphorescent night lies still and deep.

And if Mr Grewgious – nay, even Mr Bazzard – if Mr Grewgious and Mr Bazzard should greet the next morning with such a rare air of complaisance about them, that it is evident to all who know them that, had some bargain by some chance been struck, that this bargain had been most satisfactory for both parties involved - why, such is the way of their profession, even in the dry and subdued confines of the chambers graced with P. J. T. keeping Positively Jolly Time above the door.

And if, some scores of snug years hence, Mr Grewgious and Mr Bazzard, remaining, the both of them, quite remarkably well preserved – if they should leave to travel, for a while, on account of Mr Grewgious’ health – why, nothing could be more natural.

Indeed, the only innovation in their course of life the slightest touch productive of remark, after the night in question, was a certain mellowing one might discern in the pale, plumpish ways of Mr Bazzard. So pronounced was this mellowing, on occasion, that the more earnest denizens of Staple Inn were sometimes heard to discuss, amongst themselves, the possibility that his play had, as it were, come off.

But seldom, it must be admitted, was any credence attached to this possibility.

Only Mr Grewgious could, at times, still be heard, giving his opinion on the matter. “Oh dear me, yes,” he would say. “I do have faith, you understand. I do, I do, and ever will. For,” he would inform his interlocutor, something of that old twinkle in his eye, “the subject, I assure you, is most stirring. Yes, stirring,” he would say, “in the extreme.”

 

 


End file.
